Leader of Men
by Lomonaaeren
Summary: HPDM slash, darkfic. Harry leads a ragtag army in a desperate war against the breeding Dementors. And through it all, Draco Malfoy is by his side. COMPLETE


**Title: **Leader of Men

**Disclaimer: **J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.

**Rating: **R

**Pairing: **Harry/Draco

**Warnings: Several character deaths **(not Harry or Draco), heavy angst, violence, sex, arguably Dark!Harry. DH spoilers, no epilogue. Episodic.

**Summary: **Harry leads a ragtag army in a desperate war against the breeding Dementors. And through it all, Draco Malfoy is by his side.

**Wordcount: **~6700

**Author's Notes: **This is darkfic, without much comfort to be had, and a fairly cynical attitude to the sex and lots of other things.

**Leader of Men**

Harry burned Dean Thomas's soulless body at sunset.

It was a peaceful evening, dripping with light. The twenty or so of them—Harry had stopped counting, preferring to keep track of the fallen by name—stood around Dean's body in a loose circle and watched as Harry cast the spell that cut his throat. He'd been Kissed the day before. Harry had kept the body as long as he had so that everyone could say their farewells and stop thinking of it as "Dean." It would never be Dean again.

But no matter how long they'd had to stop thinking of it that way, Harry still couldn't trust anyone but himself to do the final burning. He held out his wand and said, "_Deflagro_," in a voice from which he'd drained all the emotion. It was easier this way. It gave them someone to blame and hate if they decided that he'd been mistaken.

So long as they also followed him, Harry didn't care.

The flames whistled into being across the chest, and then burned upwards to the face and downwards to the legs in a violent burst. Harry had chosen this spell on purpose. He waited until the ashes were crumbling in on themselves, then turned to the rest and nodded. "We're after the breeding ground in Manchester tonight."

The others nodded back. Ron started to lift his wand and Apparate. He was always the front guard.

But Seamus, who'd taken up the watch while the rest of them gazed at the body, said, "Someone coming up in the rear right, Harry."

Harry stepped around Seamus and readied himself to meet the threat. They were in an open field in Wiltshire. It left them visible to any Dementors that cared to come after them, but it also allowed them to notice any approaching shadows or other threats, especially on an evening like this.

On the one hand, Harry could see at a glance that the approaching figure was human. It walked on the ground, not glided over it, and it didn't carry the chill or the sense of overwhelming fear that all of them had become too familiar with. On the other hand, they'd encountered plenty of Muggles who wanted to shout at them for trespassing, and also the mad Peacemakers, who thought that some kind of truce with the Dementors was possible. Harry kept himself tense.

"Potter," said a voice he'd thought he'd never hear again.

"Malfoy," Harry said, with a nod. The murmuring behind him rose and then almost at once died down again. The people who followed him didn't care as much about what Malfoy had done in the past; they wanted to know what he'd do now. "Do you have information for us?" If there was an attack in the immediate neighborhood, Harry would divide the group, sending most on to Manchester but taking a few to investigate. Multiple attacks were often a sign that the Dementors were trying to set up a new breeding ground.

"No." Malfoy stopped in front of him and stared at him. Harry studied him carefully. He looked half-starved, but in his eyes was a look of desperation and determination that Harry recognized. So the next words that Malfoy spoke didn't surprise him. "I want to join you."

Ron muttered something that sounded like, "And you're going to accept him?" Harry glanced once over his shoulder, and that stopped. He faced Malfoy again.

"You have to be able to produce a Patronus," Harry said. "You're no good to us if you can't." He'd had to leave George behind, and Arthur, and McGonagall, because they couldn't do it in the face of the losses they'd sustained.

He would have missed Malfoy's smile if he wasn't looking directly at him. "I have the memories to do that."

"You have to be able to follow me." That requirement had eliminated a lot of older wizards, who wanted to play political games and head-games and demand that Harry respect their "seniority." Harry didn't care about that. What mattered was that he knew how to defeat Dementors and had developed the best methods to destroy their breeding grounds, and he was virtually the only one in the group who'd numbed his rage enough to make command decisions instead of personal ones. Like burning the Kissed, for instance.

"That's no problem at all."

Harry paused then, because there was sarcasm in Malfoy's voice that might cause trouble. But it was trouble that he knew how to deal with, and the past would be useful if Malfoy decided to rebel, because none of Harry's other followers would help him.

"Then welcome along," Harry said. "We're Apparating to Manchester to take care of a Dementor breeding ground. You know the Apparition coordinates?"

"Lead the way," Malfoy said, stepping up to Harry's side as if he'd followed him as long as Ron or Seamus had.

Harry nodded, and they went.

*

Harry appeared near Ottery St. Catchpole and cast the spell that would detect human beings of Weasley blood. As he suspected, the trail led away to the west, and he picked his way gingerly through the overgrown grass in that direction, watching for Dementors every moment.

Ron crouched beside the ruins of the Burrow, his head in his hands. Harry waited as long as he could, until the shadows began to grow and he knew the Dementors in the large and well-protected breeding ground to the west would have begun to swarm.

"We need to leave," he told Ron.

Ron shuddered and stood up, still facing the pile of bricks and wood. His hands moved over his face. Harry stirred and barely managed to repress a sigh. He allowed this to happen because, without it, it was likely that Ron would someday run screaming at the Dementors with no concern for defense. But Ron still acted as though they could bring the dead back to life. Harry didn't see why he needed to mourn at the _place _the deaths had happened rather than carrying those deaths forwards in his memories.

"Do you think we'll win?" Ron swung on him suddenly, his eyes wide with the need for hope that had also played its part in driving people away from Harry's side. "Do you think we'll avenge them someday?"

"We've avenged them a hundred times over," Harry pointed out. They had. They'd located and destroyed their first Dementor breeding ground less than a week after the Dementors invaded the Burrow and Kissed Molly, Ginny, Bill, Fleur, and baby Victoire, and they'd killed hundreds of Dementors since then, surrounding them with cages of despair and fear and leaving them to starve.

"But I want an end to the war," Ron whispered. "It's what they would have wanted. I want to play with my niece. I want my Mum back."

"That's what you can't have," Harry said.

Ron shivered and stamped a foot on the ground, looking as if he would kick a stone for a moment. "God, you've become a cold bastard, Harry."

"And proud of it." Harry turned to the west. Yes, there were Dementors moving there, drifting around in slow circles as they roused themselves to leave their young and go in search of happy memories. He nodded to Ron. "We need to leave."

Ron didn't move. "Promise me that we'll go after this breeding ground next."

Harry tossed him a single impatient glance. "You know that we can't, Ron. Not without a different technique or more people than we possess now. They'll simply devour us, and the war—and the attempt to avenge your family—will be worse off than ever."

Ron folded his arms and glared at Harry. "Promise me, or I'm not coming."

Harry ground his teeth and stifled the urge to stamp his own foot. Merlin, couldn't Ron _see sense? _They had to win slowly and in the long term, not just victories that felt good in the short term. Attacking the Ottery St. Catchpole breeding ground was one of the long-term plans, especially since Harry had evidence now that the Dementors they drove away from other grounds retreated there to make a stand.

But Ron didn't look as if he wanted to listen to sense at the moment, so Harry made his decision.

"Then don't come," he said. "I'm sure you can find your way to Hogsmeade and join the rest of your family. Give them my regards." He turned and walked back to the Apparition point, keeping one eye on the west. Running in front of Dementors would attract their attention. It was tempting, given the fear crawling up his spine, but if Harry had been interested in letting fear control his actions, then he would have gone to join the Peacemakers long ago.

"Harry? What—mate, no, you can't—" Grass crunched as Ron ran after him and seized his shoulder. Harry stopped walking, but didn't turn around. It was up to Ron to work his way in front of him and stare into his face. "I didn't tell you something that should have made you abandon me," Ron whispered.

"You said that you'd prefer not to come back with me." Harry shrugged, eyes fixed coldly on him as Ron opened his mouth. "Your price for staying is to make me do something that would be fatal to the whole war effort, just because you hurt a little. What else was I supposed to think?"

Ron shut his eyes. "I only _meant_—"

"I know what you meant," Harry said. "You want everything to be just the same as it was, like the Muggles cowering in fear of a threat they can't see. You want the dead to come back to life, like the Peacemakers. It doesn't work that way. It won't work that way. I don't care how much you want it to. It doesn't."

"You could have a little human feeling," Ron whispered. "Sometimes I think you're nothing but a robot."

"But a robot that fights Dementors, and does it well," Harry said. "That's the point. Are you going to fight Dementors and do it well, or not?"

Ron stood there, rubbing his arms, gritting his teeth. Then he said, "Sometimes I _hate _you, Harry."

"You can hate me all you like," Harry said, and once again started walking back to the Apparition point, "as long as you fight."

Malfoy was waiting for them. He lifted his head when he saw them coming, his face pointier than ever, his eyes bright. They went to the west constantly, tracking the Dementors who tracked them. Harry approved. Malfoy had shown that he had the instincts to stay alert and the ability to listen, even if he needed help to cast a Patronus and understand some of the more complicated strategies.

"Done with your fit of temper, Weasley?" Malfoy asked, in an idle tone that his eyes belied.

"Be quiet, Malfoy," Harry said, and though Malfoy inclined his head in what looked like mock obedience, Harry knew he _would _obey, and that was enough.

*

The larval Dementors thrashed in front of Harry, glistening black skeletons covered with slime and more than two feet long. Clawed fingers reached for him. Their pale, blind eyes shone like lamps in the darkness of the breeding ground, as their instincts pulled them towards Harry, and Ron, and all the other sources of food in the area.

Harry thrust his wand forwards and spat, "_Aconitum!_"

The Aconite Spell didn't work on adult Dementors, but it was more than enough to take care of the larvae. Fat drops of green venom scattered from the end of Harry's wand, obscuring the _Lumos _charm for a moment, and then the larvae shrieked. Their eyes withered and fell out of their heads; their shining black bodies stilled; their fingers became twisted sticks. Then they slumped to the ground in stinking pools and dissolved.

"Well done, Potter," Malfoy's unmistakable voice said in his ear. "Finnigan's broken their defenses on the south side, and he's got about half the adults in a despair ring. But we've got other adults swinging around to the north to attack."

Harry didn't need further details. If the Dementors got north of them, then they'd come in behind and possibly overwhelm some of his people with sheer numbers, or Kiss them, before they were aware of danger. He turned and raced silently back over the slimy stone of the Portsmouth breeding ground, dodging the thicker pools that had once been larvae, Malfoy keeping up with him effortlessly.

A shadow unfolded to his left as Harry paused to leap a larger pool. Cold hands grabbed him and dragged him suddenly close to a gaping mouth. He tensed his muscles to fight and lifted his wand, but the fear numbed his muscles, and he knew that he'd be too late to stop the Kiss. Grimly, he watched the Dementor push its rotting hood back.

"_EXPECTO PATRONUM!_"

The silver ferret tore past Harry's face and directly into the Dementor's mouth. The monster screamed and flung Harry to the ground as it tried desperately to get away from the creature. Harry fell to his knees but rolled over and came back up on his feet at once, smiling slightly, grimly, as he watched the ferret nip at the Dementor's heels as it floated rapidly away.

He nodded to Malfoy. "Thanks."

Then he took off running again, filing the odd expression on Malfoy's face away in the back of his mind as a curiosity. Terry Boot welcomed his help in the north with a single nod, the way Harry liked it. He flung himself into battle, chanting the spells that would conjure balls of free-floating despair and move them into place around the Dementors. Malfoy stood shoulder-to-shoulder with him, chanting the spells to anchor the balls.

It was the most successful of their battles so far, destroying the second largest breeding ground in Britain after the Ottery St. Catchpole one. They lost Seamus, who died holding the line in the south against several Dementors who tried to break free with their hands full of larvae, but considered against what they had achieved, Harry didn't mind that.

*

"Malfoy."

Malfoy looked up from his meal of bread and apples, stolen, as usual, from Muggles who had dropped their groceries in fear when Dementors—an invisible depression, as they categorized it—attacked them. Harry caught his eye and jerked his head towards the tent he'd set up for himself a few hours ago. "Want to see you in five minutes."

Malfoy gave him a faint, edged smile, nodded, and returned to his dinner. Harry stepped into the tent and cast a few reinforcing spells that would make the wizardspace inside more solid. Then he began to pace back and forth and run his fingers through his hair.

He stopped that when he realized that he was _tearing _at his hair, tugging on it hard enough to make his scalp hurt. He shook his head and forced himself to relax and release his grip. It didn't matter what had happened today. He was not going to lose control of his emotions like some Peacemaker who preferred to conduct arcane rituals of "blessing" and leave gifts out for the Dementors.

The tent flap bulged, and Malfoy stepped inside and stood there looking at him as if Harry had promised him a second dinner for his pains.

Harry strode up to him, seized his shoulders, and slammed his mouth onto Malfoy's in a kiss. Malfoy made a short, sharp sound, but then sighed and opened his lips so Harry could mash their tongues together properly. Harry pulled him closer, squeezing his arse and pinching his spine.

"I'm going to fuck you," he said when he pulled his head back, "because you're the only one who won't make a fuss about it and act as if this means anything more than stress relief. Tell me if you have a problem with that." He didn't think Malfoy would, the way he was pressing back into Harry's hands and rocking and moaning like a whore, but he wanted to make sure.

"N-no." Malfoy let his head fall forwards on Harry's shoulder and opened his mouth, sucking on Harry's neck.

"Good."

Harry pushed Malfoy to the ground and pulled off his clothes with a few rough sweeps of his hands. He'd learned how to do everything quickly since he started hunting Dementors, including getting clothes on or off so he could run to battle or get into bed and snatch a few hours of restless sleep.

Malfoy's body wasn't what anyone would call beautiful, scarred as he was from Harry's _Sectumsempra _attack and tortures that Voldemort must have put him through and the splashing of Dementor larval acid. But it was something better than that: _sharp. _He looked like a predator stripped to the very bones, nothing but muscles and angles. Harry sucked on Malfoy's elbows and kicked his legs wide, rutting his cock against Malfoy's knees, to show his appreciation.

Malfoy moaned softly when Harry pressed into him, but he didn't complain, even though Harry hadn't used much lubrication or stretching and had forgotten to use a Cushioning Charm. He rocked beneath Harry on the ground, his legs wrapped around Harry's waist. Harry half-knelt and half-stood and thrust into him, concentrating solely on the warmth that enclosed him. When he came, he flung back his head and pulsed a load of stress and anger out along with the semen.

He collapsed to the ground, hardly caring as Malfoy grabbed his hand, brought it to his cock, and masturbated with Harry's fingers. He did turn his head to the side to avoid the splatter of Malfoy's spunk a moment later.

Malfoy didn't immediately clear out of the tent, the way Harry had thought he would. Instead, he draped himself close to but not over Harry and yawned. "Weasley should die every day, if it means a fuck like that," he muttered.

Harry rolled over and punched him in the face. Malfoy cast an _Episkey_ on his broken nose without flinching and crowded into Harry's blankets exactly as if he were welcome.

Harry didn't have the energy to make him go away, not when it would mean wasting the clarity of mind that the fuck had brought him. He lay awake, making battle plans and not thinking about Ron, who had died with his soul in a Dementor's mouth. He didn't think about the way Malfoy snored, either, or the possessive leg that he flung over Harry's hips. The snoring was an accident of anatomy, the leg an accident of sleeping.

*

"Oh, _Harry._"

It was somewhat wrong, Harry thought, for Hermione to speak to him with more despair in her voice over Ron's death than she expressed over the fact that Dementors had taken most of Britain. But then, she wore a green robe with a bright golden patch on the shoulder. Harry stared at the patch as Hermione sat there with her head on her knees. It bore a dove soaring across the yellow background, which resembled a beam of sunlight if Harry looked at it long enough, and holding an olive branch in its beak.

"He died bravely," Hermione whispered, raising her face at last. "But so unnecessarily. I'm been doing research, Harry, and there are ways of placating fairies that I think might work with Dementors—"

Harry rose to his feet and cut her off without remorse. They'd been sitting on the front stoop of her flat in London as if everything was normal and they were friends again; Harry thought he owed her that much, since he'd come to bring her the news of Ron's death. But he would end the delusion when she tried to sweep him up in _her _delusion. "Dementors don't want anything we have, Hermione, except our souls and our memories. It's impossible to make peace with them."

"You don't know that!" Hermione rose to her feet, and her eyes and face blazed. "You haven't _tried!_ You've just killed them, and killed them, and probably set back the state of our relations with them by over two hundred years—"

"They're monsters," Harry snapped. "Not slaves, like house-elves, and not beings you can reason with, like centaurs. Trying to make peace with them isn't going to _work_, Hermione."

"You don't know that," she repeated. She fingered the Peacemaker's badge on her shoulder. "The rest of us want you to stop this useless war, Harry. You'll never kill all of the Dementors, and we don't have a right to commit genocide like that. They have a place in the ecology of the wizarding world, whether or not we want them to. Instead of trying to massacre them, we should be trying to understand them."

Harry felt the temptation to tell her the truth swelling in him. She was a reminder of old days, before the Dementors had burst their bounds a year after the war and established themselves as the worst threat British humanity had ever faced. She was his only remaining friend. He wanted to tell her and watch her face change.

But the simple fact of the matter was that he couldn't trust her. If he gave her the truth, then it was possible she would carry that truth to the Dementors, under the misguided impression that she was saving them. So he had to be quiet.

"You go on trying to do that," he said, "and see how many researchers you lose." He turned around. Malfoy stood at the far end of the street, on guard, and waiting for him. He straightened when he saw Harry facing him.

"It will be fewer than the soldiers _you_ lose," Hermione snapped.

Harry nodded to her. "Of course it will, because we're facing reality while you're hiding from it," he said, and strode up the street until he reached Malfoy.

"I wish you could see yourself," Hermione whispered after him. "You've become inhuman, and there's nothing I can do to get you back, as long as you keep thinking that the Dementors are mindless monsters who kill out of hunger."

Harry couldn't contain his bitter snort as he reached Malfoy's side. _She provides the most concise description of Dementors I've heard in months, and she can't even recognize it when it comes out of her own mouth. _

Malfoy bumped his shoulder against Harry's and scraped his teeth briefly down Harry's cheek, probably to punish him for spending time with Hermione, who Malfoy had said several times Harry should leave to rot. "Are you ready to leave?"

Harry glanced over his shoulder. Hermione stood there in her billowing green robe, the ridiculous image of an impossible peace brilliant on her shoulder. She shook her head as he watched and stepped back inside her flat, letting the door swing behind her with a gentle bump that suggested she thought she could close out their friendship with it.

"Would I have come over here otherwise?" Harry asked, and they Apparated.

*

Harry opened his eyes and took a long breath. Normally he was skeptical of ideas that others claimed had come to them in dreams, even though Seamus had said that he developed the anchor spells that would keep the despair nets in place around the Dementors that way.

But a vision had come to him in his sleep, like a gift, and he knew, now, how they were going to eliminate the breeding ground at Ottery St. Catchpole and win this war.

He started to sit up so that he could grab parchment and ink—or paper and pens; they used what they could find—to write the idea down. But something tangled with his legs and held him still, and someone gave a sleepy groan into his ear. Harry turned his head, hissing in annoyance. He didn't care how tired any of his people was, they didn't need to fall asleep right beside him and possibly risk a fatal consequence if he attacked before he was fully coherent. Wartime reflexes were chancy.

"What's going on?" Malfoy's voice asked.

Harry rolled away from him without answering, found his wand, lit the tiny contained hearth in a corner of the tent, and Summoned the ink and parchment, which turned out to be in supply. He sat down at the makeshift table he'd constructed from scattered pieces of wood and even more scattered knowledge of carpentry spells, and began to make a diagram of the breeding ground as the scouts had reported it. That was critical to any plan of how to adapt the spells.

When he glanced over again, Malfoy had rolled himself up in Harry's blankets and gone back to sleep, his hair and angled face shining in the light of the fire.

Harry rolled his eyes and returned to his task. He doubted that Malfoy's sleeping habits should be a matter of concern to him, unless they proved to affect his fighting ability.

*

Harry spat blood and pushed himself back from the clutch of the Dementor reaching for him. The next moment, the silver stag bounded in front of him and lowered its antlers. The Dementor glided away from him and tried to come in from the side, but the stag charged, and the monster fled.

Harry fought his way to one knee and stared grimly around. They were battling on the outskirts of an old pure-blood estate in Sussex, in the worst environment possible—not only a place darkened by the fear and chill of the Dementors, but littered with spells and booby traps left behind by Peacemakers who wanted to "protect" the new breeding ground. Harry had already seen Terry with a broken leg and a motionless body that he knew was one of his, though who it had been he didn't know.

_Bloody fuckers, _he thought of the Peacemakers, and then he stood up and whipped his wand sideways, casting a Sunburst Charm that lit up the immediate area.

The light faded quickly, but Harry could see that a large group of Dementors were coming together near a broken wall that had probably surrounded a garden once, preparing to counterattack. The only one facing them at the moment was Malfoy, his blond hair unmistakable in the light.

And he was stooping over someone on the ground, instead of standing up and paying attention to the enemy as he ought.

Harry hurtled silently in his direction. Not because it was Malfoy, not because he was distracted, but because allowing the Dementors to choose the time for their attack would overwhelm them all.

The memory of Hogwarts took a moment to come, and by then the Dementors were spreading out in a fan-like pattern, reaching for Malfoy and the limping Terry and a pale-faced Neville and all the rest of them. But Harry lifted his wand and bellowed the spell that had never failed him, and the stag leaped straight and triumphantly into the middle of the monsters. They scattered, and Terry and the rest started laboring to contain them in a despair net. Two of his people broke away to scan the area for larvae. Harry didn't trouble himself about who they were. Everyone in the group recognized young Dementors by now.

He trotted up to Malfoy's side, intending to yell at him about what the fuck he had thought he was _doing._

Then he realized that the broad, sturdy body Malfoy bent over had the glassy stare typical of a Kissed victim, and a Peacemaker's badge on the shoulder. More than that, the face that showed in the light of the _Lumos _charm was familiar.

Gregory Goyle.

Harry had never realized he was among the Peacemakers. He wouldn't have thought Goyle had the stomach or the balls for it.

He put a hand on Malfoy's shoulder and left it there as long as he decently could, until some Dementors threatened to break the despair cordon. Then he turned and left him to his silence and his grief.

*

A hand intruded into his vision and flung his papers to the ground. Harry reared back with a snarl, ready to challenge the person who dared to interrupt his drawing up of a plan of attack on Ottery St. Catchpole—

And then Malfoy grabbed him and slammed him to the ground, straddling his hips, and Harry shut up at the sight of the intense blaze in his eyes.

"You used me," Malfoy whispered, "because that was what you needed. Well, now I'm going to use _you._" He lowered his body, driving most of the breath out of Harry, and bit his lips, and shoved his tongue into his mouth until he nearly choked.

Harry wrapped his legs around Malfoy's waist, and gave up protesting. He still remembered the stage in the plans he was at, and he could recreate them later if anything had been damaged.

More than that, he remembered the look in Malfoy's eyes as he'd stood over Goyle's corpse.

He let Malfoy pull off his clothes, wincing but saying nothing when he heard cloth tear and buttons pop. Malfoy paused and stared hard at him, eyes shining like the sun off icebergs. He seemed to have heard the silent protest.

"I'm going to give you something else to think about than your _clothes_," he promised, his voice as sharp as a threat, and then he was on Harry, biting angrily at his mouth again, pushing his legs wide. Harry wished he could work himself into a more comfortable position—a pebble was beneath his shoulder—but Malfoy wouldn't give him time to do anything but gasp breathlessly and part his legs and let the finger slide inside him. The finger had saliva on it, not oil.

Malfoy did conjure oil later. He worked and stretched Harry open in angry silence, and then pushed inside him and held still, watching Harry's face as he worked through various stages of discomfort.

When Harry thought he could do it, he gave Malfoy a brief nod to tell him to get on with things. Malfoy shut his eyes and threw himself into the thrusting as Harry liked to do, with no care for anything but the easing of the pressure that made his life intolerable as long as it built up inside him.

Harry hadn't been in this position before, though. He found it was rather a different experience to feel the enraged shoving inside his own body, to watch the light dapple Malfoy's hair and throat and eyelids, to see the way he clenched his teeth and choked back sobs, to feel the cruel grip of fingers on his own skin. Malfoy hadn't taken off all his own clothes; Harry didn't always do that, either. The scrape of cloth against the back of his legs was a new and unsettling thing.

When Malfoy came, he hissed through his teeth as if he was seeing Goyle's body all over again. He pulled free with a sticky plop, and Harry rolled over and reached for his wand to cast a Cleaning Charm.

Malfoy tugged him backwards onto hands and knees, making him yelp. His fingers plunged straight back into Harry's arse, holding it open, while his other hand snaked beneath Harry's body, grabbing his cock.

Harry tried to pull away, but that sent a shooting pain through his genitals. He turned his head and asked, "Malfoy, what—"

Malfoy took his lips in a furious, open-mouthed kiss that rather rendered any talking pointless. Harry gasped and wriggled, trying to get free, which pushed him further into Malfoy's fist. He rocked backwards, and fucked himself on Malfoy's fingers.

After that, it didn't take him long to get hard. He kept his head bowed and his mind separated as much from the motions of his body as possible. Strange burning sensations cascaded through him, and when he caught one glimpse of Malfoy's face, eyes focused in determination on Harry's cock and arse, he had to turn away.

He came at last, and Malfoy smoothed his hand back along Harry's cock as if he wanted to rub his semen into his skin. Harry grunted in discomfort. Malfoy still crooked the fingers in his arse up and sideways before he pulled them free. Harry heard the mutter of a cleaning charm and was glad that Malfoy was still normal in that, at least.

Then Malfoy pressed him to the ground before he could rise and stared into his face. Harry stared back, having no idea what he was supposed to be giving Malfoy, or taking away from him.

Malfoy shut his eyes when he lowered his head for another kiss. This one went on and on, making Harry light-headed from lack of air.

So he didn't protest when Malfoy dragged him into the blankets and rolled Harry beneath him for a second round. There were no Dementors within a hundred miles; they could afford the distraction.

*

Malfoy was beside him when they finally attacked the breeding ground at Ottery St. Catchpole. Harry had explained to Neville, in particular, that it was because Malfoy was magically the strongest next to Harry himself and familiar with the Dark Arts incantation Harry had adapted to carry the poison. It was the only reason he had taken the place that otherwise would have been Neville's.

Neville gave him a small smile and nodded. Harry was glad that he understood the practicalities so well. Ron wouldn't have.

He and Malfoy moved in together, shoulder-to-shoulder and then back-to-back as the Dementor resistance grew worse. They were surrounded on all sides, cut off from the others. Every single remaining Dementor in Britain had fled here, and they were fighting desperately to preserve the larvae spread in pools in every direction, and the cool clumps of mist that would coalesce into eggs, and their own existence.

Harry had never fought beside someone whom he traded off with so well. They functioned like clockwork. Harry would cast his stag Patronus, while Malfoy chanted a part of the sonorous Latin incantation that would carry the poison. Then Harry would chant the next piece of the incantation, and Malfoy's ferret would run circles around them in the air.

The poison took the form of a great green cloud that spread out above the breeding ground, and then blended with the natural storm that Harry had delayed the attack in anticipation of. Venom seeded the clouds. Thunder growled, and death for the Dementors was in its voice. The lightning struck the larvae, drawn irresistibly to them, delivering blast after blast of a charge that left them smoking and writhing.

And other lightning blasts struck the eggs, to electrocute the life in them, and others struck the adult Dementors, to render them sterile—an infectious sterility, that they could spread to others of their kind they encountered.

Harry almost did not care when he found himself prone on the earth, beneath a Dementor who had dodged both stag and ferret in order to open its mouth and Kiss him. He had accomplished what he wanted. Even if some adult Dementors fled from this battleground, even if they traveled to other countries, they would never contribute to a growing population again.

Still, he wasn't displeased when the ferret headed off the Dementor, and Malfoy's hand shot out, grasping his and hauling him to his feet.

Malfoy pinned Harry against a stone and kissed him, again and again and over and over, sloppy kisses that sent saliva trickling down Harry's chin and made his jaw ache with stretching so wide. Harry clasped his shoulders, uncaring, and kissed him back.

*

"I can't believe that you did that, Harry." Hermione was almost in tears. She stood in front of him, her eyes afire with rage and pain. "It's like—it's like destroying all the house-elves, once you found out they wouldn't serve you anymore! How could you _do _that?"

Harry rubbed a hand across his face. They stood in front of Hermione's flat again. It was two days since the last of the Dementors had fled Britain. They'd last been seen crossing the Channel. The Muggle news was reporting freedom from the attack of "unexplained depression" and "unusual serial murders" spread across the country. Already people were squabbling for precedence inside the Ministry, as if they hadn't spent the last two years huddling inside their homes, and McGonagall had announced that Hogwarts would be opening in a week.

Harry had, foolishly, imagined that this meant he could have Hermione's friendship back, that they could be integrated into each other's lives again.

He should have taken warning from the way the press had treated Neville and others who had a home to go back to. His people were being criticized for the way they'd fought, their risky tactics, their small numbers—only ten had come through the attack on Ottery St. Catchpole—and how long they'd taken to get rid of all the Dementors. Meanwhile, the Peacemakers were praised for their enlightened ideals and "brave front."

Harry would have stayed in Britain, if Hermione had shown any sign of wanting him at all. But with her turning against him like this, there was no reason to do so.

"I did it because it had to be done," he said, dropping his hand from his eyes and addressing her when she began to quiver as if she'd explode. He thought about being angry, about defending himself, but what was the point? If Ron's death hadn't made any impact on Hermione, he doubted any words he could speak would. Mostly, what he was was tired. "Because without it, there would be no one left to argue about the morals of what we did."

It occurred to him as he spoke that this was the second time in his life when he could say that was true. Voldemort's threat hadn't been as mindless or on the same scale, but it certainly would have crushed talk of morals, since the greater part of those left would have accepted his views without question.

"It was still wrong," Hermione whispered. "Genocide always is."

"Then maybe you should have a talk about that with the Dementors, who wanted to kill _us_," Harry said, and turned away from her to walk to the end of the street, ignoring her chattering about how Dementors weren't mindless beasts. It would only irritate him.

He would get out of the country. Go to the States, or maybe to Australia. The other side of the world, as far from Britain as possible, sounded good right now.

"Potter. Wait up."

Harry turned, and blinked. Malfoy was walking towards him, casually, as if he had every right to stand around Hermione's building or Apparate into this part of London. His face was still all angles, his eyes still bright as icebergs, but there was something hungrier in his stride, as well as the gaze he fixed on Harry.

Harry shook his head. It was no longer wartime, so he didn't have to avoid talking about certain things. "You're free now, Malfoy. We don't need each other for stress relief, and you can go anywhere in the world. Why would you want to come with me?"

Malfoy continued walking until his face was a few inches away from Harry's. He smiled, and it was a jagged, mean smile. "Because of the noise I heard you make the last time you came," he breathed.

Harry regarded him steadily. Malfoy stared back, and licked his lips.

And maybe that gesture made Harry's cock ache, and maybe he remembered how well he and Malfoy had fought together and wondered if that translated into other areas of life, and maybe he was just thinking about how hard life in Britain would be for Malfoy, who didn't have any previous celebrity to somewhat soften the press's reception of him.

And maybe there were still some things that couldn't be talked openly about.

"I didn't make any noise," Harry said, just to be difficult.

Malfoy grabbed Harry's throat as if he would choke him and leaned their foreheads together. "Then I'll have to see if I can get you to make one," he said.

Hermione was saying something else down the street, something about murder and war crimes. Harry reached up and touched Malfoy's pointy cheek, his narrowed eye, the outline of his hard teeth.

"You'll have to," Harry said. "Yes."

And they Apparated, side-by-side, and left the loud daylight behind.

**End.**


End file.
